Fine Line
by jenni3penny
Summary: "... she was the Oracle of Everything and that one thing she'd said had become the final tallied sum of their day-to-day lives." Kibbs, angsty, whompage.
1. Chapter 1

She'd slapped men before.

Hauled off and laid her hand cutting across the cheek of a liar, a cheater, a downright prick. Hell, she'd decked a terrorist and asked permission to do so again. But she'd never, _never_ , hit a man so hard as cracking her slightly cupped palm across Tony's face while under garish lighting and the smell of antiseptic.

"Where the hell were you?!" She'd inadvertently raked open the barely dried split in his lip and let it bleed down the corner of his mouth.

And a slippery little spill of pleasure went writhing through her at the sight of it.

He didn't deserve it... but her rage had needed that blood strike to feed on.

And she was only surviving on variations of need at the moment.

"I was right there, Kate." And if she'd never taken such a strike against him, his eyes had never looked at her with such pained betrayal. "You know that."

She couldn't breathe. And he was touching her and his hands were the last goddamn hands she wanted anywhere near her – because, because he hadn't done what she'd always silently begged him to do (even if he couldn't have possibly known that was her unspoken request).

He hadn't taken the bullet(s).

He hadn't volunteered himself the way she would have if she could have.

"Why didn't you stop it?" She accused, realizing that he was stronger in this moment than he had been an hour before and loathing him for it.

Tony's hands dug into her arms, she could feel his full palms controlling the drop her body wanted to make into his chest. "Because neither of us could."

"I hate you." She legitimately thought that for a moment… she really did despise him.

"I know."

* * *

"Kate." Tony said her name like it was the last word mankind could speak at the brink of an emotional armageddon. "Kate was right."

Tim lifted his head into how dully flat it had wrung from the older man's lips, how the singular syllable had seemed to cut down dry his ability to be anything but sad. DiNozzo seemed suddenly all grown up and far more knowledgeable and Tim felt marginally guilty for thinking anything less of him at any other moment of the day. He let himself study the other man's profile, noting how much older he looked when he was just quietly settling down and letting go of all the silly ways he defended himself. Juvenile comments, frantic and frenetic movements, that jock-like smirking that tended to remind the younger man of high school... all of it was gone. And his partner seemed legitimately responsible and tremendously guilty.

Tim swayed his head to the side, shaking off how oddly stripped his partner seemed. "She didn't mean it."

"She did mean it, Tim." Tony was staring at her empty desk, barely blinking as he avoided looking at Gibbs' equally deserted space. "She's in love with him."

The assertion seemed to build an invisible wall straight down the center of their offices, he and Tony on one side, their stagnantly still desks on the other. His and hers, empty on the other side.

They were always a _them_ lately – _they_ were together on cases, _she_ was always with _him_ , _she_ was _his_ partner, _they_ were interviewing, interrogating, investigating. The two of them, in constant combination, had become _them_. And he wasn't sure when that had really become a mental construct that was so unquestionable in its sudden reality.

They were together, a combination of one, even if it was just in terms of physical space.

And that fact couldn't have been made any clearer than by their combined absence and Tony's undiluted honesty.

"Tony - "

"I mean, how'd we miss that?" The other man's breathy laugh was manufactured, made to sound like laughter when all it really signaled was surrender. "A woman like Kate… that woman? She doesn't hate me so thoroughly unless there's a damn good reason."

The younger of the two minced him a sharper glance than expected, something sympathetic and disbelieving at once, "She's always had a sort of crush on - "

"This is bigger." DiNozzo argued sharply "And a woman like her? Love is the only thing that can make her truly hate."

"She didn't mean it, Tony."

"She meant it." He said it with quiet surety, like she was the Oracle of Everything and that one thing she'd said had become the final tallied sum of their day-to-day lives. "She's right. I shoulda..."

Tim winced into how flat the other man sounded, "There was nothing - "

"She would have."

He was right. He was more than right. He was speaking the immutable truth that every one of them knew and just never (ever, _ever_ ) said out loud. And by using that tone he was daring the universe to contradict him, starting with the very boundaries of their office. Just wait and see if the whole damn Navy would counter the absolute truth that _she_ , of all of them, was the one that loved _him_ most.

She would have taken that bullet (and the second) if she'd seen it coming, if she'd had the chance.

She wouldn't have questioned it for an instant.

McGee suddenly felt like he needed to join him in his statement, because it was truth and truth was all that any of them really went looking for, "Because she's in love with him."

"Shoulda done it for her." Tony looked at him once, and for once, with pure fraternal honesty. "For him."

"He's gonna be okay." He tried to make it sound just as truth-worthy as anything the other man had said in the previous minutes. It fell flat, though. Sounded trite as Tony turned his glance toward the windows, worn out.

And the silting rain that the other man was staring at said it was a bold faced and mutinous lie.

Seemed these days that the rain was their barometer for tragedy as well as pressure.

"He's got a bullet in his lungs, Tim. For fuck's sake." A blankness had dropped out the bottom of the other man's voice, stolen all emotion and voided between them. "And one in his gut. You wanna play the ponies with those odds?"

"It's Gibbs." McGee murmured, as though the man's mere identity meant that he was removed from being a normal (weak) human being. "He's gonna be okay."

Tony just breathed out a dry noise that almost sounded like sardonic laughter. "How'd I not know?"

"About Kate?"

"I mean," Tony almost smiled, ruefully and with an internal darkness that matched the shadows of the office, "how'd I not realize that he was gonna put himself between her and a gun?"

Tim blinked over his partner's stillness, exhaling words slowly, "He thinks that's where he belongs."

"She was right, Probie." DiNozzo's swift jerk of his head had his glance heading for rain run windows again. "Shoulda been me."


	2. Chapter 2

Every sound in the hospital had hummed together somehow, merging into a long range echo of the Marion County storm siren. At least the wailing way it had sounded when she was a child, low and long droning, from the basement of a two story, picket fence, and pretty little Indiana home. She didn't remember those few moments fondly, when she remembered them at all. They had been awkward space holders in her childhood. Danny had been the one to always loop her small wrist in his hand at the start of that sound and tug, _c'mon Pal, let's go play downstairs..._

Him being the second oldest, she should have realized it was a trick soon as it started. She wasn't his 'pal _'_ in anything and he never really wanted to play. Never wanted to ride bikes around the suburban block or climb the apple trees on the very edge of Mrs Larson's yard. When that siren went off she was his responsibility and, usually, soon as he'd gotten her to the bottom of the stairs she'd ended up snugged on the carpet and reading with Rachel anyhow.

The echoed memory of the sound almost made her want to call her sister... not that she'd even know what to say. And the good Doctor Cranston probably wasn't in the mood to read 'Where the Wild Things Are' all over _again_.

 _Hey, Big Sister... part of me is a blood loss._

 _Part of me got poured out onto asphalt._

But, just as well, she couldn't seem to make herself move. Even better, she wasn't even sure where her cell had ended up. Rachel's voice would do nothing but curtly remind her what it was like to feel more than this comfortable numb of nothing that was actually a culmination of everything. Rachel's voice would remind her that she was supposed to be strong, because storms meant nothing, storms were small in comparison to keeping close, a family of seven wedged into a sweat-warm and too small basement with that wailing fucking sound drummed quiet by the wind.

"Kate?" Just another sound, asking her to be strong.

Abby's lightly toned and wary voice should have made her feel something. All it did was remind her, with a flush of anger, that he had a goddamn responsibility to survive, to be stronger than her.

 _Strong is better?_

 _Prove it, you son of a bitch._

Because she could not (would not be able to) save Abby from the loss of him.

She wouldn't even be able to save herself from it.

"Don't." She shook the negation to the side before the other woman's hand could trace a touch on her and she felt the air shudder at how stuntedly her friend recoiled.

"Okay."

She knew that the scientist was hurting just as much, if not more, than she was. Abby let herself hurt more, as a general rule. Even if it was just to grasp onto the feeling, pacify its presence, resolve and accept it. The technician was much more understanding of her own pain, more confident in just... well, everything. And especially things like this, things that she knew were necessary.

Kate hated her too for a moment, just for that ability to have fear, to have pain, and not be consumed by it. "I can't, Abs. Just... don't."

"Okay."

She finally met the other woman's eyes, trying to breathe evenly as she did. "I'm sorry."

 _Maybe if I apologize he'll come around long enough to give me hell for it._

"I know." Abby's voice was full of a tone that said she knew more than she should, more than anyone else, and more than Kate had even realized.

She knew somehow.

Because she was giving over a look and a tone that said ' _Fragile, Handle With Care_ '.

Maybe he'd even told her. Maybe he'd used his hands with Abby to tell her a story in silence. It must have been a pretty little story to not hear aloud.

"I'm sorry." _Maybe if I keep doing it..._

He'd told her stories with his hands and she'd thought the endings were pretty enough.

Now she just wondered if those had been the chapters preceding the ugly end.

She needed to call her sister.

 _Rachel, read me a story?_

* * *

For two women so dissimilar in so many daily aspects of living, they were mimes of each other in the dull stagnance of nearly-dead-but-still-breathing. Because their backs were turned toward each other as though they'd brokered claims to opposite sides of the waiting room and they were obviously and quite silently each holding their own court of horror. He'd seen enough of hospitals and waiting rooms to recognize traumatic shock and the way it made a female's body seem sturdy-still, unassailable and frail at once.

Abby was turned toward a window, staring quietly out it as though the movement of the trees and the rain pattering the leaves was counting out her quiet waiting. She was using the room exactly as it was meant.

Kate had faced the wall, one arm wrapped against herself and the other hand lifted, three fingers pressing her lips. She wasn't really even in the room.

He very suddenly remembered a saying he'd once read years upon years before, something referencing a graciously innocent and beautiful sect of angels. It had been so unassumingly perfect a compliment in his mind that he had instantly memorized it for later (flirtatious) usage. It had served him fairly well a few times, in his younger years, but he couldn't imagine a moment in the decades since that seemed to fit it more than in studying the both of them at once.

 _She looks like red wine in a white glass..._

Each of them a still statue of furious and terrified blood in pale translucent skin - something deep and pretty and mulled in a delicate (verging on shattered) vessel.

He wanted to tell them 'darlings, he'll be fine'.

He wanted to drink down a bottle and wave the waiter in with another.

He wanted them to realize that they were so very much the same, while so wildly different in their loving.

Leave it to Jethro to lose a wife and daughter, alienate three wives, drive off another other handful of women along the way... and still have these two incomparable creatures, so still and loyal and beloved in their guarding.

"The Houri," he murmured softly between them as he started small but daring steps into the No Man's Land they'd created in the middle of the room, "are faithful companions to good men. Pure, loyal, exceedingly beautiful."

He neglected the fact that those good men were usually dead ones.

Not either of them responded with any sound at all anyhow (not that he'd expected much - the both of them were more like him than either would care to admit).

Caitlin stubbornly refused to look at him and Abby just turned her head slowly in his direction, the green of her eyes like sea glass and sharded.

"My angels," Ducky sighed out his guilt at so boldly lying to break through their combined silence, "he'll be fine."

Abby looked at him like she was hopeful, grateful, aching for more of the same.

And Kate, when she slowly turned and pressed harder against her lips, just gave him a voided stare that said she knew damn well he was lying and it was less than appreciated.


	3. Chapter 3

_Todd House Rules #4_ : Don't call the house after eleven unless it's an actual emergency – but always, _always_ , call in the event of an emergency. Daddy will come get you wherever you are, no questions asked.

"It's DC. Not her cell, though." Her husband was leaned into her office doorway in just his boxers and bedhead, the bedroom handset lifted so that the Caller ID was aimed in her direction.

"I got it." Rachel nodded while staring at her silenced phone and avoiding the concern in his eyes. "Go back to sleep."

He looked at her like she was insane, like regardless of the fact they didn't spend all that much time in the same room anymore – he still wouldn't leave her alone if Washington was calling after business hours.

Rachel lifted her home office phone, lungs still and quiet, "Katie?"

Wishful thinking - that if she implied it was Kate, that it would be. And not an apologetic government employer, speaking hushed condolences.

That's all she ever expected late night calls to be.

That or one of her parents.

The boys never really called, regardless of hours, unless a marriage or childbirth was involved.

She'd expected Washington to call more nights than not. September 11th? Good God, she'd waited by the phone for something, any sound. The call had come two days later and the Caller ID had read 'restricted'. Which was, no doubt, the public consumption pseudonym for Kate's norm of 'classified'. Every time one of the kids forgot the late-night-phone-call rule she expected it was because the District of Columbia was preparing to stomp on her heart.

"Kate?" Had it been anyone else, they would have responded by now. Kate was the one that got sourly silent and internally contemplative when confronted with something she didn't want to accept. "Caitlin, talk to me."

"Yeah, it's me." An obviously blank tone, despondency as a perennial fallback for the little girl she loved so much but just couldn't sometimes shake back to reality.

It was far after eleven and this woman she'd watched grow up had the voice of an emergency.

"Sweetie, it's late." Rachel ignored her husband's continued presence, ignored the guarded way he was still watching from the doorway as she exhaled a little relief at hearing any version of her sister's voice at all. "What happened?"

"Did I wake anybody up?"

 _Leave it to you to still worry about normal sleeping patterns for supposedly normal people._

She ignored Kate's deflection, letting her shoulders cradle back into the chair. "Tell me what happened."

"Somebody shot him." _Him_. There were a limited number of 'hims' in her sister's life and she usually tried to keep quiet on that subject because Kate got twitchy and defensive about it. Put up the emotional equivalent of the Wall of China. "Twice."

It was well too far past eleven and she wasn't in the mood to analyze her way around-over-under this particular wall. She knew too well which _him_ tended to have her sister's voice so subtly intimate and aching. Caitlin Todd couldn't hide a goddamn thing from her older sister when it came to men and the ones she was fantastically too far in idiot-love with. She never had been able to hide it all that well - starting with kissing Toby Maynes in the rectory.

"Where?"

"Georgetown."

"I meant... Kate," the frustration she'd started with was curbed by remembrance of how brittle the younger woman sounded, "honey, where was he shot?"

A snorted sound of something sardonic, derisive, "In a parking lot."

Rachel laxed her head back into her chair, drew a leg up under her as her husband inched into the room, his body suddenly so coiled in concern that she lifted a slow hand to stall him. "Caitlin."

"Collapsed lung and lower left abdomen."

 _And you haven't admitted the seriousness of that to yourself, let alone anyone else. Have you, Kate?_

She took a deep breath through her nose, meeting Peter's eyes with her own sort of silent denial. "Prognosis?"

And that's when hysteria had to have made an entrance.

"I dunno." Because her sister sharpened a twisted little laugh over the phone. "Ask the ventilator."

"Don't get snippy with me, I'm trying to understand what's happening."

"They won't let me see him." Kate answered just as curtly, her tone taking up stronger and fuller than it had been. There was a sudden furious and judgmental tweak to each word.

The older of the two women sighed, watched her husband as he leaned forward to set the other phone to her desk and lay his palms flat to the top of it. "Well, no, you're not family."

"Fuck you, Rachel."

 _Oh, hello there, Special Agent Caitlin. Secret Service Caitlin._

 _Tired of Getting Choke Holds From Her Brothers Caitlin._

 _Cheated on by Toby Maynes Caitlin._

… _so good to hear from you once again._

"Are you? Family?"

"You're gonna headshrink me right now? Really?" And that was the voice she remembered from screaming-in-the-hall-over-nothing fights. The one that went a little shriller and took up such an umbrage that, the older they both got, the more Rachel just wanted to laugh. "He's dying."

There was no laughter left in the whole long state of Florida.

Not for them, not at that moment.

"Is he?" She asked softly, catching the way her husband flicked her a questioning glance.

"I don't know. They won't let me see him."

Peter was suddenly leaned across her desk, his hand drawing one of her pens up as he tagged a piece of paperwork over and just scribbled two letters.

 _Go._

Rachel breathed through his intrusion, nodding a shrug of supposed agreement in his direction. "What do you need from me, sweetheart?"

He cocked her a stark look and scribbled again.

 _You, Big Sister._

"Just you."

"On the phone or there?" She lifted her eyes into his silent watching, caught the jerked nod of agreement he gave her before he shrugged – as though it was a given she should go.

She loved him more in that moment maybe than she had in months.

"I don't know yet." Brittle and broken again and nothing like a Todd. "They won't - "

"Accept that, Kate. It's fact. They're not gonna let you in there yet. Accept it and move on." That was a tone they'd both gotten from their mother, Christ help them. But it was a necessary evil when pushing past an emotional fallout. "Next step. What do you need from me?"

"Just you, Rach." Which was her little sister's way of asking, begging, for her to be closer.

Little books with more colors than words. _Dis one, Rae? Please?_

Malfunctioning toys. _It's broke, Rae-Rae. Please? You fix?_

All three of the boys. _Rach! Ow! Tell 'im to stop it!_

Career choices and changes. _I can do this, Rachel. I'm not a little kid anymore._

Not the boys, but the men. _I dunno, Rach. He's just such an unbelievable ass sometimes._

"Okay. I'll be there." That's what big sisters were for, right?

"Rach?" That same unassuming plead in her voice.

"What, sweetie?"

It was a beat of silence and then another, a deep breath of reality. "I'm sleeping with my boss."

 _Baby girl, you're ass-over-teakettle in love with your boss._

 _But, sure, we'll get there one grudgingly incremental step at a time._

"I know you are. About a month?" She took up the pen from his hand as he continued to carefully watch her, making a note in the same margin about frequent flyer miles. He just nodded and snatched up the phone, already turning from the room with the silent consent and mission she'd given.

"Little more." It was a slow and bare admission. "Almost two."

Huh. Little Katie Todd had gotten doubly guarded somewhere along the way.

Probably about when she'd met one Special Agent Jethro Gibbs.

"You send me the hospital information." She nodded, even with the knowledge that Kate wouldn't see the movement. She'd feel it though, somehow. "I'll be there as soon as I can."


	4. Chapter 4

She had no idea how he'd so swiftly figured it out – except that she knew she'd been silently bleeding it all over the place. And she knew that, when it came to matters of men and women, he was actually a far better investigator than she was.

They'd discussed it, actually, she and Gibbs.

In bed, her back to his chest and his hand bracing palmed to her forehead while he nuzzled down the curve to her shoulder.

" _DiNozzo's gonna figure this out before anyone else, Kate."_

" _What are you worried about? You're not the one he's gonna harass."_

" _Exactly. Still worth it?"_

" _Suppose I'll make the sacrifice."_

Tony was too good an investigator at times - because he was looking at her like he'd caught them red-handed and in the middle of a secret.

Which, in all reality, he finally had.

She hadn't washed his blood off her hands yet...

But Tony's form of (Gibbs Approved) apology, silent and a motion rather than words, was everything she needed anyhow.

Because he'd somehow (without explanation) brought her a maroon Marine Corps sweatshirt that was doubly too large for her but would fit the smell of sawdust and familiar soap around her like a shield.

"C'mon, Kate." The thicker fabric was grasped in one hand while his other skirted the hem of the green one she was wearing. "Take this off."

Tony avoided the paint-like swatching of brown muddied blood that had stained strange shapes across her chest and stomach. He'd even bled up her sleeves, the stains spattered up from where her hands had frantically and unconsciously pressed into his wounds.

" _Don't you leave me."_

She froze up against the reaching of Tony's hand, arms blocked into her center as her voice snapped out harshly between them. "Don't you touch me."

" _Kate? … you're hurt."_

" _It's not me, Gibbs. Breathe."_

"Agent Todd." And Tony's voice suddenly had a sturdiness to it, an unavoidable control that sounded so much like the older man that she could nearly blink past the unwelcome replay in her head. "Take off your shirt."

Nearly.

" _It's... it's you."_

" _Don't talk. Just breathe."_

She was distracted, fingers plucked into the crisp part of the fabric, gripping against dried blood, "I wanna keep it."

" _Caitlin."_

" _Look at me, Jethro. Right here. Stay here with me, huh? Don't go anywhere."_

"I want you to look at me." Tony had a look in his eyes like she'd just punched him in the gut and she wasn't all that sure why - but it seemed too sweet and haunted for how abrupt a tone he was using, for the forceful shift of his hand as he caught the bottom of her shirt in pale fingers. "Kate, look at me."

" _Sorry, sweetheart."_

"Put this on." He nodded at her slowly as the other hand lifted the sweatshirt, the mixed colors in his eyes going darker as he nodded some kind of silent support. "C'mon, you're freezing."

" _Don't apologize. Just stay here."_

"I'm sorry for what I said." It tasted stale on her tongue as she blindly stripped the shirt off, but then most lies were hollow of energy anyhow.

The Decalogue, The Ten Commandments. You shall not bear false witness (but, if you do, be very _very_ specific).

" _Sorry, Kate."_

Surprisingly he held her eyes as she traded one shirt for another (though she shouldn't have been all that surprised, he was still her friend and she should have given him far more credit than that), "You didn't mean it."

Yes, she damn well had. They both knew that much.

But they were both grown ups, big bad federal agents. They could pretend.

Kate reached against his hand, avoiding the concerned way he held against the blood stained shirt and seemed to consider, for just a moment, whether or not to let her have it. "I need you to find them."

"Probie's got a few hits." He gave it back to her anyhow, handed it over like grudgingly giving a child their security blanket, fresh from the dryer, even when he knew she shouldn't need it anymore. "We're checking things out."

She wrapped and balled the discarded fabric into her stomach, clutched it into the front of the hoodie that swam on her as she shook her head slowly back and forth at him. "I'm not coming. I'm not leaving."

Tony's face went accusatory and sympathetic at once and she felt, in that moment, so righteously guilty for having thought any less of his strength. "Didn't ask you to. You're not fit for duty at the moment, Todd."

He was right and he was strong.

Damn him for being right. And for actually being stronger than her.

Because it meant she was so much more than obvious, more than failing, more than lost.

"Ducky's talking to the doctors." She murmured, her painted hands hidden into the rolled and scrunched up fabric that she was digging tighter into her stomach. "Abby hates me."

"Abby doesn't hate anyone. Not any of us anyhow."

Right, because Abby... Abby was better. Stronger.

Abby would survive (slowly, carefully, and in tethered up pieces or parts) if he died.

Most all of her just... wouldn't.

"I'm sorry." _Not really._

"You didn't mean it." _Yes, I did._

He'd already forgiven her for it, though.

And she wasn't completely sure why.

"How long, Kate?"

She looked at him suddenly, new and whole and somehow above-beyond the moment. It was an innocently made question, devoid of any teasing or the jibes he would have made had he found them out without a swell of blood between them. For as much as she'd worried about that teasing, detested the idea that at some point he'd be doing a little ditty about Katie and Gibbs, sittin' in a tree... she ached for it.

 _Gimme one little jab. C'mon, DiNozzo. Gimme another reason to give you a slap._

 _Because you're being too sweethearted. And it's scaring the crap out of me._

"For me or for him?"

"For you." A tweak of an almost sad smile touched over his lips, reminiscent and the warmest thing she'd seen on his face for hours. "He's loved a little of you since we all met."

She turned her head toward the window and instantly turned it back to avoid the night rain, "Don't placate me."

"I don't placate in situations like these, Kate." Tony's eyes thinned over her, head cocked as he swallowed impatience and just exhaled. "It's gauche."

 _Suck it up, Todd. Face the squad. It's time to be strong again._

"Same, I guess." She felt, even in the admittance, like he already knew the answer. "Since we met."

He nodded agreement, an answer to her silent assumption. Sure, of course he'd known. He wasn't stupid, nor was he blind. "And how long... can't be all that long. I would have noticed more than the usual... subtext."

"Not long, no."

 _Just long enough for this to be Hell._

"Okay." He was pulling at her wrist slowly, drawing a bloodied hand up hand between them so he could land her missing cell phone flat into her palm. "I want you to keep this on. Charger's on the table. I'll check in later."

"Why are you taking care of me?"

 _Why are you treading so lightly? Because you think he's gonna die?_

"He'll slap the hell out of me when he wakes up if I don't."

No joke about her having already done so. No jab or poke about her taking a swipe at him when he was already down.

It seemed not everything was fixable between friends. Enough, but not everything.

"Stay available. Lemme know when they let you in there." He tapped the cell with a finger, ignoring the audible swallow she made. "I'll take care of them. You take care of him. Yeah?"

"Deal." Kate agreed, her thumb rubbing the cover of her cell in an unconsciously made shift of movement.

Tony nodded, his voice controlled and assured again. "Tell me you can do this."

She looked up at him, jerking a quick nod between them. "I've got it."

"You need anything else?" His hands hand caught lightly against the sides of her head, keeping her glance level to his as he studied her pale face.

"No." She swallowed into the way he seemed to be trying to press a measure of his own strength into her with tentative palms against her hair. "These are enough."

He just nodded before dropping his head and hers, a quasi kiss pressed to the crown of her hair as he sighed all the air from his lungs, voice hashing quiet, "Kate? Go wash your hands. Please?"

* * *

His Spanish had always been pretty slack.

 _Hog wash and horse shit, Probie. Your Spanish is complete shit. You let me do the talking._

 _Right, Mike. You talk. I'll just stand back here and look intimidating._

His Spanish had always been deplorable in comparison to, say, his Russian.

But the last time every inch of his lungs and gut and groin burned this badly, it had been Spanish that was drifting through the cracks of (un)consciousness.

He could hear a voice and it sounded... it wasn't Rose. Beautiful Rose.

Now, her Spanish had been damn impeccable.

English wasn't all that bad either. For a Colombian, anyhow.

" _Shhhh. You stay here. Breathe."_

He wasn't actually hearing anything, except what maybe echoed in his head.

He could smell the roses, though. Didn't need to stop and take the time when Shan had 'em on the kitchen counter near the coffeepot. Coffee and roses.

Had they been there last night?

Like he woulda noticed... they'd been a little, well, busy.

" _Guess I can breathe now, Gunny. Welcome home."_

Roses on the counter and freshly ground coffee were always the next-morning round of 'Welcome Home'.

" _God, I missed you."_

The smell of coffee and the velvet of a rose petal, catching its inherent and thin softness by calloused fingers.

Shouldn't touch to ruin. Leave them alone.

He shouldn't have touched... because now she was bleeding. Wasn't she?

Viscous cherry red on her fingers when she'd pressed his lips still.

A deeper red rose color just above the collar of that green shirt he liked, swiped and wiped across that strong collarbone.

But… Shannon didn't wear that shade of green. Hated what it did to the color of her hair.

" _It's not me, Gibbs. Breathe."_

It wasn't her, wasn't Shannon. It was darker. Like his coffee.

It wasn't Rose and her perfect words either.

It was the end. Last stop. Get of the train, time to de-plane.

Of course she wasn't gonna de-plane. She flew in on it.

" _It's... it's you."_

His black coffee, darker hair.

Sometimes, when the sun slanted on her just right, deep rose red tinted her hair.

Rose red murder, blood on her hands.

" _Don't talk. Just breathe."_

Strong is better in black coffee.

Roses are redder when they're blood colored.

Rosefern _. Oh, Christ._

 _It's her. She's covered in it._

Kate. Caitlin.

"Agent Gibbs, just try to breathe normally. There's a tube down your throat. Don't fight it."

 _Baby, stop bleeding. You're making it impossible to breathe._


	5. Chapter 5

At some point, she wasn't completely sure when, Abby snuck her into a shower in one of the unused patient rooms. Guarded her things and said very little as she sluiced wet hair off Kate's forehead and tucked it behind her ear.

" _He likes it when your hair's down."_

" _It's not red. I'm not a redhead."_

" _Kate... that stuff's never mattered to him when it comes to you. Trust me."_

" _You know I want to."_

* * *

At some point, when she'd curled that same hoodie back around herself, Tim had sat (mostly) silently beside her and shared a cup of coffee that tasted sour, burnt.

" _Tony's interrogating him."_

" _Tony should shoot him."_

" _He did. Once. In the knee."_

" _I woulda aimed higher."_

* * *

At some point, Ducky had pointedly looked at her as though she were a disobedient child.

" _Caitlin, if you don't at least try to sleep, I will have you sedated."_

" _I did try. I failed."_

" _You could at least assuage an old man's concern and pretend to be asleep."_

" _I'm running out of 'pretend', Ducky."_

* * *

At some point, her sister had walked through the door... and she'd finally let herself cry.

" _I'm sorry I made you come here."_

" _Don't you dare apologize."_

" _You sound just like him."_

" _Well, I did teach you to have exceptionally good taste."_

* * *

There was a selfish bit of her that maybe marginally (hugely, actually) enjoyed having Kate tucked into her side again, the younger woman's head ducked down into her own so that she could wipe the sleeve of the sweatshirt she was wearing against her face. Rachel sifted against darker hair, rubbing her jaw into the way that, for once in a long handful of years, her little sister allowed her this strength of comfort. The ability to be her touchstone.

The very fact that her sweet little soldier was letting her curl them into a puddle of quiet leaning may have tweaked on her emotions more than she'd expected, lowered her voice to whispered as she rubbed a kiss into dark hair. "It's okay to love him, Katie."

"It's not, Rachel." It was sniffled and sniped at once, angry but childishly annoyed. "That's the fucking problem."

Yeah, the petulant little kid act wasn't generally natural to either of them – and it was getting tiresome. It was starting to rasp on her that Kate had so easily let herself fall into the emotionally driven cliché of it. Although, it seemed somewhat forced even as Kate scrubbed the sleeve of the hoodie against her face again. It seemed like she'd let herself go there out of a complete loss as to what the hell else to do.

"No, it's not." Rachel stretched back supposedly comfortably in the indecently uncomfortable chair, her shoulders loosely going up and down as she met dark eyes. "You're the problem. Both of you."

The younger woman disentangled from their huddle with a jerk of movement that suddenly reminded Rachel of the time she'd unapologetically jammed her little purple sneaker directly into the crotch of one of the boys. A distinctly strong and unfettered movement, unexpected considering how small she'd been in comparison to all of them. And then she'd just smiled, some little ripple of pleasure tripping over her lips as she'd turned her shoulder up and walked away, her pony tail whipping as she left him groaning.

Tommy? Had it been Thomas?

It didn't matter which one it had been. What mattered was the shift of her sister's shoulder.

And how clearly it drew her back to what she really was... strong.

"Don't do this."

 _Don't be your sister?_

 _Or don't say what you can't say?_

"Don't be an idiot." Rachel murmured sharply back as she let her head tip back into the chair, sighing out a previously unrealized tiredness. "Caitlin, look at me."

There were worlds of fury in her sister's eyes but she seemed to be hovering somewhere in an unnamed and uncharted stratosphere, too far away to be touchable.

"It's okay, kiddo." Rachel nodded as she leaned forward, matching their similar bodies to a similar forward leaning, delicate forearms on knees and smalls wrists loose with sure hands tightly fisted up. "You're allowed to be scared right now, considering how you feel about him. In fact, you're expected to be. Clear?"

"I'm not in - "

 _Don't you dare, you little shit._

"Are you about to lie to me? Really? You wanna reconsider what you're about to say to me?"

The very fact Kate wouldn't look at her made the victory a little less enjoyable.

Still... at least she hadn't tried to force an obvious lie back between them when they'd spent too much time apart.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Rachel softened quietly, nudging her shoulder into the other woman's gently, her head turned into the way Kate was using her hair to hide the fact that her face was ashen and stricken. "You're allow to be scared... but it's not _you_ to fall apart. Figure it out, Kate. Because you're not you right now - and he's gonna need you, not whatever this is."

"It's possible that I'm in love with him."

 _Step One, Katie? Accept the inevitable reality._

"Possible or probable?" She prodded by way of a whisper.

"Why do you do this?"

"Because I'm your big sister. I'm supposed to." She talked right past how quietly young her sister's voice had become. "And that's why you called me – because you won't allow anyone else to do it. Tony? Abby? You're not gonna let either of them tell Kate Todd what to do and especially in this situation. Not when it comes to him."

 _Him_ again.

For being a man she'd never had the pleasure of meeting, he was seriously starting to affect her life in a plethora of (often frustrating) ways.

 _He damn well better live just so I can threaten to kill him if this ever, ever, happens again._

Kate's face pent up annoyed that the words were smacking too near to right as she stared forward into a sullen blankness. Too close to absolutely correct, too close to true.

It didn't last long, though, that swinging perturbation. It faded into a truly saddened glance as the younger woman crowded the too long sleeve against her mouth and nose and shook her head slowly back and forth in stillness.

"There was so much blood, Rae." She murmured quietly, seeming almost detached from the words even as she loosened them from her throat. "How could he lose that much blood?"

"They've replaced it by now."

Kate winced a little into the educated suggestion, frowned at the reality of it. "But that was his."

* * *

His eyes were shut when a particularly kind nurse finally let her lean into the stuffy room.

And a large and central part of her was so thankful for that, grateful that she hadn't had to face the complete knowledge in his eyes. That she wasn't forced to instantly own the fact that he needed to do no more than match her glance in order to fully comprehend, at any given time, exactly what was going through her mind.

But then she very suddenly missed that blue.

And, just as quickly, she forgot every item in the world she could have compared that particular color to...

"He's sedated." The woman's voice was hushed behind her, intentionally curbed soft and gentled into the back of her. "Limited contact, okay?"

"But I can touch him?" Kate shook her head quick look, her hands both fisted closed at her sides. "I just... "

"Just be careful." There was a velvety quality to this woman, something that brushed soft by both voice and the touch of her fingers down Kate's arm. "I'll be right down the hall until three, okay?"

"Thank you for this."

"You can shower in here." The nurse was already on her way back toward the door, waving her fingers loosely toward the adjoining bathroom. "Just try to keep it quiet. He needs the recovery time."

"Seriously." Kate murmured after her, turning a glance back over the long stretch of his utter stillness. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. The morning shift will let you stay in here but you've gotta just let him heal, okay?"

She nodded, already ignoring the other woman's presence, already tipping soft steps to the side of the bed. "I get it."


	6. Chapter 6

Fact was, being alive hurt like a motherfucker.

And, no, that wasn't language he'd usually use in the presence of a pretty lady.

But... _Mother. Fucker._

He couldn't talk, he could barely see, he wasn't entirely sure if he was really breathing and... _Christ, that hurts. All of it hurts._

So he focused on the way her head was cradled awkwardly along the back of the chair, the dark of her hair slashing disparate along the pale of her cheek as she slept.

And he tried to remember her name.

It was a pretty name, he thought. Something easy and warm and something he'd said often enough that he felt stupid for not having it at hand. His hand. His hand felt hotter than the rest of him, damp and cramped and he was pretty sure that's why she looked so uncomfortably slanted in the chair. Because he couldn't see where she was reaching, her arm stretched out along his side as the rest of her tipped in the opposite direction – but he was fairly sure her hand was curled up in his.

 _It's just a damn name. Why can't I remember it?_

"Hey. Relax." Her eyes were a surprise to him, brighter than he thought they'd be for the color he'd expected. Their lightness softening as her voice murmured on him. "It's Kate."

No, it wasn't. That's not what he was trying so hard for, it wasn't the right thing. Wasn't the right variation. It was... That wasn't right. Damn it, that wasn't right.

 _Katie? Katie. Close._

 _Sometimes. Maybe. Sometimes. Yes._

"You should be sleeping. You're gonna get me in trouble for bothering you."

 _Bother me more if y'want. You're damn pretty and nobody's watching._

She _was_ awfully pretty, despite how tired and battered down she looked. Pretty wide eyes, pretty curved smile, pretty way of whispering so it didn't make him hurt any more than he already did. The angle of her jaw was nice, familiar too.

 _Stay here and keep bothering. Maybe I'll remember more of you. You make it hurt less._

She was tracing on his forehead and he wished that he could suss out the feeling of her fingertip from all the other things he was feeling because something about the way she arched her wrist and angled it over his eyes was so... comfortable. "C'mon, gorgeous. Close your eyes. I'm not leaving."

She kept making murmured promises and the only something in his chest that didn't actually hurt believed her, because he'd heard them before, she'd kissed them on him before.

He'd kissed her back before.

Wasn't all that pleased that he couldn't seem to move to try to do so again.

 _Caitlin._

 _Oh, thank Christ. Her name's Caitlin._

"Please? You've gotta rest, Gibbs."

 _She likes cinnamon. And strawberries. And chocolate._

"I'm not going anywhere." _Coffee. She hates coffee._ "I promise."

 _No, she just hates my coffee. She loves her own._

A sweet noise slipped between her lips that he could barely hear, but he knew it. He knew he knew it. He knew that exact sound she made when he touched her hair. "Go back to sleep."

 _She sleeps on her side. Or on me. She sleeps tucked all up._

Her lips made a brushing sensation along his knuckles and he thought maybe he woulda smiled if he coulda. Maybe he was, though? "Just sleep."

 _She sleeps with me. In my clothes._

 _… she's wearing my shirt._


	7. Chapter 7

It didn't take long for her to wake and, frankly, he wasn't entirely sure she'd really been asleep. Maybe she'd just closed her eyes awhile, slacked back in the chair she'd turned sideways beside the hospital bed. One of her legs hand stretched along the edge of the thin mattress, near his but not daring to touch. The other leg was awkwardly tucked underneath her, the curl of her body all on her right side as her left hand reached and soothed the inside of his palm with slowly circling touches.

So, she hadn't really been asleep.

Just pretending to be somewhere, in the middle of something almost normal (normal to them, anyhow).

"How did you get in here?" Ducky asked gently, keeping his words barely above murmuring as she met his eyes.

He doubted she was sleeping at all, actually.

She was very much a creature of predatory instinct in moments like these – very much similar to the man she was so stubbornly sitting sentry beside.

"Magic," she whispered dryly, closing her fingers around Jethro's with a slow curling of a surprisingly steady hand.

"Caitlin."

"One of the nurses." She turned her head toward him with eyes dark enough that he thought a moment he could see his own reflection. That was, at least, until she blinked them closed and let her head slack back into the chair wearily.

"Has he been coherent at all?"

"In and out," the response was murmured quietly, eyes still closed and hand still tucked around the prone man's palm. "He has no idea what's going on. He's relatively calm, though."

Ducky nodded as he finally approached her, letting his shoes shush just enough on the floor that she'd register the movement but it would otherwise disturb nothing in the room. "Due to the sedation. The chest cavity is a negative space. Directly after he'd been shot you sealed the vacuum created by...?"

Kate's eyes were still darkened black as she looked up at him, her head tipped back and pale as she watched him lean along the chair and closer. "I used my ID. Over the wound. Put pressure on it."

And in a moment of weakness he could help but wipe limp dark hair back on her head, palm crowning the top of her head as he exhaled some unmitigated pride. "Anthony said as much. Darling, you're brilliant."

"Secret Service training." It was just a mulish excuse of an explanation, no pride in it for herself. "When they told us that I thought it was such a ridiculous solution but..."

"The other wound is primarily superficial. Mostly external damage." Her head seemed to nudge closer into his hand, as though searching for a scrap of comfort or attention. "It's that lung that's our main concern."

She just nodded with no apparent response. Only acceptance of certain reality.

"Your sister is at your apartment, getting some rest."

"I gave her my keys," Kate responded blankly into it, her head turning back to where Gibbs was still laying still. "Ducky... I've behaved... poorly."

"The severity of your response was understood fairly quickly, Caitlin." He forced her attention back when he brought his hands to her face like a father to a child, an extremely upset (or unruly) child. "Though, none of us quite understand why you felt you needed to hide what was going on. None of us are the Director."

And there was a blind numbness to the back and forth shifting to her head, seeming thoughtful and thoughtless at once. "I don't think it was a conscious decision. We just... did."

"Abigail knew anyhow." Ducky's smile was indulgently warm.

"I figured," Kate's tone was lukewarm as she said it, nearing back to normal but still hazing dismal. "You knew it too."

He chuckled sardonically toward her, eyes brightening as his thumbs rubbed her cheekbones and his head dipped closer. "Did you really think either of you could hide something so..."

"Wrong?" she asked the interruption as though it was an expected truth.

And he just smiled wider, shaking his head ruefully with a whisper of loving. "Inevitable."

* * *

Abby fussed a lot.

And especially when it was in regards to Gibbs.

"You could get in trouble for this." The technician was tucking her fingers up into the sleeve of Kate's shirt, the both of them scanning the hallway as they leaned closer to his door.

But her fussing seemed stalled, her fingers clenched into fabric as she hovered at Kate's shoulder.

She turned a half smile toward her friend, feeling too tired to fake much else. "See if I care."

"Should I talk to him, or - "

"Don't wake him up, Abs." Her voice was quieter than even she'd expected as she swayed the door, open, turning her eyes over his stillness as she shifted enough to let Abby pass. "Just be there."

"Kate..."

She had to start making reparations somewhere.

And maybe Abby was the easiest way back to forgiveness.

Because, in general, Abby _was_ forgiveness, as a whole.

"Sometimes he opens his eyes and he wants to talk but he can't so, just be there." Kate forced the smile complete, felt the warmth in the way the other woman mimicked the movement instantaneously. "Keep him calm."

"You're not staying?"

"I'll be back," Kate regarded her quietly in response, nodding once as though she were making an immutable statement to anyone and everyone at once. "You'll take care of him."

* * *

She had absolutely no doubt that she looked horrible, a mess and a half of puffy eyed, pale faced, emotionally unstable woman. She also had no doubt, as she huddled the jacket Abby had brought closer around herself, that every silently awed stare she'd gotten so far had been less about how she looked and more about the fact that, by now, _everyone_ knew.

Everyone knew that she'd reflexively sunken her hands into blood and begged it to stop flowing. Everyone knew that despite the fact it kept going, so did their love affair. Because she hadn't been able to keep from telling secrets to an audience as they waited for an ambulance. And they all knew that him saying her full first name _that way_ meant more than just delirium or shock or blood loss. They all knew that her climbing into the ambulance after him and slapping Tony's hand away with a hiss had been the first prowling swipe of her public tenure as protector, guardian, warden.

They all knew, even as she watched the elevator numbers change and bring her closer to what was supposed to be home, that the very strength of her vitriol had signaled how suddenly serious this really was. They knew it was a moment of change – because it had suddenly created in her something so righteously vicious, so protective and fierce and _angry_.

Slapping DiNozzo wasn't something out of the ordinary, not really.

Accusing him of selfish betrayal ( _especially_ in regards to Jethro Gibbs) had been the aberration.

And as the doors opened to that damn garish orangey paint, she hoped he'd understand somehow.

That she'd had to do it.

That, to be so nakedly found out, she'd had no option but to bare her teeth.

* * *

"I'm sorry."

He studied how she'd crouched into the front of his desk, her body looking so especially small as her arms cradled on the edge of it and her chin rested into them. "For what?"

Kate let her head angle as though she was waiting for him to catch up, voice quieting, "For all of it."

He knew that the entire squad room had taken a paused breath, holding still from the moment she'd stepped out of the elevator right up until she'd intentionally bent into a crouch that held him higher than her. In actuality, it seemed they'd been holding their breath for far longer. And he peripherally wondered how long all of them could last. Because they'd pooled the capacity of their lungs - but nothing could outbreathe the emptiness of a vacuum, nothing could outlast the void the combined vacancy of their two desks created.

(Maybe if it had been just one and not the other... maybe.

If one was gone the other would still stay true, somehow.)

"Rule Six," Tony murmured quietly, letting his fingers reach far enough across the desk just to tap a fingertip affectionately against the end of her nose.

Kate nodded agreement into his negation of their feelings, complicit with the fact that, all in all, neither of them _wanted_ to feel much more than they already did.

Her jaw lifted somewhat, nodding once before she set her chin back against her arm and gave him a winsome but weary smile. "He opened his eyes. Keeps waking up."

"That's good." Seeing a smile on her was more than enough to make the movement infectious, his lips twitching as he saw some sort of cognizant hope in her eyes for the first time in days.

"I think he remembers more every time but... what do I know?" The shrug that accompanied the words lowered her eyes and dug her chin deeper against her arm, making her seem extremely young. "He looks scared."

Tony let his fingers spread against her arm, noticed that she didn't flinch at the movement, found it as a comfort that her internal defenses seemed to have regarded him as welcome once again. "You should get back there then."

"Abby's with him."

"Abby's not you, Kate." DiNozzo gave her another smile, this time as boyishly charming as he could muster while she still stayed so small before him. "Abby needs him. He needs you."

She looked at him quixotically, as though she weren't entirely sure he was being serious.

Or, rather, that he was correct in that particular statement.

"Rule Six." He wasn't sure she even knew what she was (not) apologizing for anymore but he had the idea it included this, and that, and everything she could possibly think of in a short span of time. Which, even he would admit, was quite a bit. Her brain had a tendency to over-drive itself double time.

He just nodded before he swayed his hands back toward his keyboard, shrugging it off like they were just teasing each other again and their whole world wasn't watching. "Apology accepted. Now get back to work."


End file.
